Soundtrack of my life: Donny Osmond

He was the clean-cut teen idol to end them all. But how did he escape from his legions of Seventies fans? asks Will Hodgkinson. Easy - by relaxing in a gadget-laden bed that would have graced a Bond film

I was eight, and at home we had the Red Room, which was actually the room with the television and stereo in it. I remember being in there with this record, staring at its cover for hours. I realised, even at that young age, that the mysterious cover was the most brilliant marketing campaign. It was full of hidden clues that people would want to decipher. Because I was behind the camera, so to speak, I understand how the whole thing was a facade, how showbusiness is all smoke and mirrors and how pop songs manipulate our emotions. I was aware of what Sgt. Pepper was doing to me and I let it do it anyway.

When I was a teen idol

Songs In The Key Of Life, Stevie Wonder (1976)

At the height of Osmania my life was crazy. On one level, it was hysteria and extreme pressure - being a teenager and yet having to maintain a career like that was very tough - and on another it was exciting. I was always travelling and I had a longing for being at home, being normal, and this was the album I associated with home. It was a little bit of relaxation for me and I lived vicariously through Stevie Wonder because he was making the kind of music I wanted to make, but that's not what people wanted to record. But, you know, I was a little white kid. I didn't have the soul of Stevie.

When I was a no longer a teen idol

Hysteria, Def Leppard (1987)

For me, this was the defining album of the heavy metal era. I loved it so much that I called up Phil Collen, the band's guitarist, and we became friends. I asked him to play on my album Eyes Don't Lie, and he came into the studio and did this fantastic solo. A few weeks later I got a call from him to say that we had a problem. He couldn't have his name on the album because Def Leppard didn't want to be associated with me. It's a sad situation, but music is 80 per cent image and perception. It's still a hugely influential record for me none the less.

When I came off tours with the Osmonds

Bump City, Tower of Power (1972)

My bedroom was like something out of James Bond. The bed had a motor that raised it up to the ceiling, and it would go through a hatch to reach a workbench where I used to build radios and speakers. Beside my bed was a shelf dedicated to my eight-track cartridge player - it was a globe with two speakers on either side - and on that eight-track, most of the time, was Bump City by Tower of Power. My mum listened to Perry Como and Andy Williams, and I was on The Andy Williams Show at the age of five, but a few years later I was listening to funk and soul like Parliament, and, most of all, Tower of Power.

When my career collapsed

Don't Give Up, Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush (1986)

I really wanted to be taken seriously as an adult contemporary singer and I moved to Bath because nobody in America would give me a record deal. I had an epiphany when I heard Back in the High Life by Steve Winwood and So by Peter Gabriel. It was Christmas 1988, and I listened to 'Don't Give Up' [from So] over and over, because I almost had given up. The song had the line 'You have friends. Don't give up' and I thought, Yes I have friends, but I have no career. Then I made a single, 'Soldier of Love', which was a huge hit, so the song became prophetic.

Strange and possibly true

1. 2007 marks Donny Osmond's 50th year in show business. His current album, Love Songs of the 70s, is his 55th.

2. Donny suffers from social anxiety disorder. 'Typically those who suffer from the disorder believe they are being talked about or criticised, when in reality they are not,' he says. 'In my case I was being criticised and talked about, which made the situation even worse.'

3. Four of the Osmond brothers auditioned to be members of the von Trapp family in The Sound of Music. Donny was not one of them.

4 . Denim, the early Nineties band formed by the reclusive Lawrence, had a song called 'The Osmonds' that referenced both early Seventies pop life and the IRA bombing campaign.